


Have You Seen Me Lately

by eluna



Series: When We Were Young [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Cuddling & Snuggling, Dean Winchester Has Anxiety, Depressed Sam Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Emotionally Repressed Dean Winchester, First Kiss, Haircuts, M/M, Nightmares, POV Dean Winchester, Pre-Series, Protective Dean Winchester, Samulet, Sharing a Bed, Suicide Attempt, Teen Winchesters, Weecest, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:28:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8276045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: He just needs a minute to himself, just needs to splash some water on his face and wake himself up. He’s just wound up from staying up all night; as soon as he can get three or four hours of sleep, he’ll calm down and know how to save Sammy, and he won’t feel like… like…Dean clenches his hands onto the ceramic edges of the sink and tentatively tilts his head up to the dusty mirror. There must be something in his eye, both his eyes, but it’ll flush out with water, and the whites are only bloodshot because he’s so tired, and as he twists on the cold water, he has a fleeting, hysterical urge to call Nancy and tell her—what, exactly? That Dean let his kid brother turn suicidal on his watch and he didn’t even notice?(Or: Thirteen-year-old Sam attempts suicide. Dean handles it, or at least tries to. Title from the Counting Crows song.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part in a three-part (or longer) series I've been working on since March of this year, held up variously by writer's block and by my own extreme procrastination and avoidance of the revision process. No guarantees when the next part will be up, but it's probably almost half written already, so at least I've got something to work with! Gigantic thanks to **publia** for the beta and lots of late-night phone calls talking me through my thoughts and concerns about the verse.

_Michigan, November 1996_

Dean can feel the pulsing _thing_ taut between them, aching when they’re apart and throbbing _hard_ when shit gets real, most strongly at times like now, as he hovers in the doorway of the motel bathroom to find Sammy sheepishly unloading an armful of prescription bottles into the medicine cabinet. “Sammy? Got a fever or somethin’?” Dean asks, but his voice cracks because Sam would’ve told him if he were sick, would have been bitching floridly about his sniffles or diarrhea or whatever long before caving and taking something for it. And all the over-the-counter stuff is in Dean’s duffel anyway; they only stocked the bathroom with—

That’s when Dean notices the notes folded neatly on the toilet seat and addressed, one to him and one to Dad, in Sam’s best cursive, which isn’t actually any good: the letters are shaky and marred with eraser marks. Sam never writes in cursive. Sam hates cursive.

Oh.

Sammy plunks the last of the bottles on the shelf and looks guiltily up at Dean, one hand clenched into a fist and leaning heavily on the counter. “You said you were spending the night at Nancy’s house,” Sam says in a choked and incredibly small voice.

“I _was_ , until her parents got back from their retreat in Maine a day early and decided to spend their evening there with Nancy, too. Nice couple, though. Insisted on me staying for dinner.” The words tumble out stupidly.

“Oh. Okay.”

They just stand there and look at each other for a few seconds, Sammy’s knuckles steadily turning white, Dean somehow both clamming up and burning up at the same time. _You’re so precious_ , Dean wants to say. _I’m sorry I failed._ Instead, he flings an arm around Sam’s shoulders and tugs until Sam stumbles forward, his cheek coming to rest on Dean’s chest. Craning his other hand forward to pluck up the letters, Dean nuzzles his nose into Sam’s hair—gently at first, then faster until Sam lets out a snort of laughter.

Sammy pulls backward to flash Dean a pretty, though halfhearted, smile. When Dean raises the letters and asks, “I don’t think you’ll be needing these things ever again, do you?” Sam’s smile fades further, but he shakes his head all the same. “That’s my Sammy,” Dean says warmly. “Let’s go get you cleaned up,” he adds, and he drops the paper into the nearest trashcan for housekeeping to deal with as Sam follows him into the main room.

The walls are this horrible taupe color, and Dean doesn’t want to know _where_ the sickly yellow stains on the popcorn ceiling came from, but the beds are soft and the TV and the heat are both working. Sam’s been sleeping in Dad’s bed while Dad’s been out on a hunt—he’d be gone no longer than a week, he’d said, which of course has turned into eleven days and counting—but Dean doesn’t react when Sam slips into Dean’s bed instead.

“How much did you take?” Dean asks, and all things considered, he thinks he does a damn good job of keeping his voice steady.

“Not a lot. Maybe—half of Dad’s sleeping pills? But the bottle wasn’t full, and I feel fine. Really.” It’s unnerving to Dean how softly Sammy says it.

He’s not taking any chances with his Sammy, especially knowing nothing about doses, but Sam’s eyes flash with terror the second Dean mentions the word _hospital_. Dean deliberates for a minute, sighs, and hops onto the bed. “Okay… Okay. Go get some damp washcloths from the bathroom,” he instructs, nudging Sam a little toward the edge of the bed when at first he doesn’t react. As Sam stumbles across the room, Dean snatches up the wastebasket on the floor next to him and grips the rim tight, tight.

Sam looks lost and very much thirteen when he emerges from the bathroom, gripping a few washcloths tensely in one hand with his eyes flung wide open. He sidles up onto the bed as Dean pats the mattress a few times; Dean throws his legs out and apart and pulls Sam into the crevice between them, handing him the basket. “This is gonna suck,” Dean says gruffly, “but it’ll be over quick. If you feel _anything_ weird anytime tonight, you _tell me_ , and we’re going straight to the hospital. Wake me up if you have to.”

He talks Sam through gagging himself with one finger and keeps both arms wound loosely around his brother’s waist as the kid’s dinner and a dozen tablets flood down Sam’s hand and into the trash. Panting, Sammy falls back hard onto Dean, who grabs one of the damp washcloths Sam’s laid out on the mattress and starts to wipe clean Sam’s mouth and hand. With a second cloth, he carefully scrubs at Sam’s sweaty, tearstained face and neck.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Sam asks.

“Go get some water and rinse. We’ll get you somethin’ for dinner in a little bit.”

Heaving himself off of Dean and to the floor, Sam says, “But I already ate.”

Dean gives him a playful shove. “Yeah, and I can see exactly what you ate in the bin in front of me. You’ll get hungry. Now go.”

Setting aside the soiled towels, Dean flicks on the television and allows himself a few deep, ragged breaths. That Dean hadn’t _known_ , hadn’t realized… clearly, he’s failed pretty spectacularly in the role of big brother to not even notice Sam wanting to off himself. Or was Sam, clever little Sammy, deliberately hiding it, unable to trust Dean enough to confide in him? Has he been lonely at school? At home? Can’t have been; he’s got Dean, hasn’t he?

Thank god for Nancy Albright’s stupid parents. Without Sammy… but no, Dean can’t afford to think like that.

When Sammy reemerges from the bathroom, Dean reaches into his own duffel to toss Sam a fresh hoodie and pair of sweatpants. They’ll be baggy on him, really baggy, but if it were Dean, he’d rather his clothing be too big than too small, which most of Sam’s clothes are on him these days. “These should be warmer for you,” Dean says simply.

Keeping his eyes trained vacantly on the TV, Dean lets Sam settle back in between his legs when he’s done changing, like how they were sitting before when Dean had him throw up to detox. He gives Sam a hard time when Sammy asks for the remote, holding it high and waving it left, right, and left again, but he caves and passes it over when he feels Sam bracing himself to wrestle for it. They can roughhouse later: Dean’s feeling more frightened the longer he plays it cool for Sam’s sake, and right now, he just wants to hold the kid, to smell the honeyed musk of his hair and memorize the pattern of the beauty marks peppering his skin.

Sam’s midway through a growth spurt, and his bones feel all wrong in Dean’s hands. It’s probably been years since they last sat like this, with Sam practically (or, when they were _really_ small, sometimes literally) in his lap, and Sam’s a lot closer in height to Dean now: there’s a good chance he’ll grow up to be the taller of the two Winchesters, an idea Dean’s _not_ ready to accept just yet. His legs feel too long, his arms feel _way_ too long, and though Sam never had much baby fat to begin with—food money has always been tight—his soft curves have given way to sharp angles lined with modest layers of muscle.

When Sam’s head tips back and goes limp against Dean’s collarbone, Dean tenses up and looks down to find his eyes closed. He gives Sam’s shoulder a gentle shake. “All right there, Sammy?”

Blinking, Sam twists his hips until he’s more or less facing Dean. “I’m fine. I’m not… I’m just tired. I’m okay.”

Dean’s not convinced that Sam is _okay_ —they wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation if Sam were _okay_ —but they can worry about that once Sammy makes it through the night safely. “Try and stay up with me for the next couple hours, then? Just so we know for sure?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, okay,” says Sam. “But we’re gonna have to do something besides watch TV because _nothing_ that’s on right now is worth staying awake for.”

“What, you’re too good to watch… what is this, _Home Improvement_?” Sammy grins at him and smacks his chest lightly. “Turn that shit off. You reading anything right now?”

“Yeah,” says Sam, plucking up the remote and flicking off the television. “This book for school, _1984_. It’s this dystopian—”

“Yeah, I know of it,” Dean says. “You like it?”

“Uh-huh. I’m like halfway through.”

“Perfect. You wanna read it to me?”

Sam’s soft grin droops a little. “Really? But you always…”

“I’ll be good,” Dean promises. “No interruptions. Not even if somebody has a stupid name or a mouth like a thesaurus or does something to another dude’s balls that _no_ guy alive would say felt good—”

“ _Dean_!” squeals Sammy, who’s now sifting through his backpack for the book.

True to his word, Dean lets Sam read to him uninterrupted, mostly. Sammy’s stretched out with his stomach pressed to the mattress, his chin in one hand with the other holding the book, and after a while, Dean, sitting Indian-style with his knees close to Sam’s back, can’t help but work his fingers into Sam’s chin-length hair and memorize how it feels, memorize the little groan Sam makes as Dean scratches circles into his scalp. The kid is _alive_ , and thank god for Nancy’s parents, and if Dean lost him without ever finding out what his little vocalizations sound like now that the pitch of his voice has started dropping, how his growing bones fit clumsily into his skin, whether he’s changed his favorite book or food or color, why the _hell_ he’s so unhappy… why Dean wasn’t… he isn’t…

“Dean, seriously, you can’t pull crap like that and claim that you aren’t being a distraction,” Sam is saying with a poorly restrained laugh. “Dean, c’mon, let go of me. Dean?”

“Sorry, squirt, my bad. Zoned out a little,” says Dean. He stops scratching but can’t quite bring himself to draw his hand away from Sam’s scalp. “Listen, what’s your favorite color?”

Sam twists upward, frowning. “Purple. You know it’s purple; you never let me hear the end of it.”

“And your favorite food?”

Sam doesn’t answer, just stares at him with an overflowing look and says, “Dean, please don’t get weird about this. It was stupid, and I’m not gonna do it again, and just…”

“You’re damn right it was stupid,” says Dean with no heat behind it. “Just—just tell me what to do.”

Immediately, Sam replies, “Come to sleep with me. I’m _tired_. And I know you haven’t been listening to me read.”

Sighing, Dean says, “That isn’t what I meant.” Sam doesn’t respond this time, just picks at a loose beige thread in the comforter. “Tell me what you need me to do. Just pick one thing you need from me. I don’t know how to…”

“It’s fine, Dean, honest,” Sam murmurs.

He can’t accept that. He shakes his head, insisting, “No, it’s not. S’posed to take care of you, and I don’t know what more I gotta do to make it be enough for you, so just _please_ tell me what to—”

When Sam slowly sits up and reaches forward to brush his thumbs along the circles under Dean’s eyes, his fingers come away from Dean’s cheeks wet. Dean gives a humiliating sniff and busies himself drying his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. Sam says again, “Come sleep. Let’s just get some sleep, Dean.”

Leaning backward, Dean mashes his hand along the wall in search of the switch for the overhead light, but after he finds it and flicks it off, he leaves the dim lamp by the bed burning. At Sammy’s repeated tugging on the bottom of Dean’s sweatshirt, Dean gives him a mellow “yeah, yeah” and pulls both of them under the thin blankets. As he flings his arms around Sammy to pull him right up against his side, Sam squeaks in protest and punches Dean’s arm a few times, but he quickly gives it up and leans into him, draping an arm over Dean’s chest and burrowing his face into the crook of Dean’s neck.

His breath spills out in hot spurts against Dean’s neck and shoulder, smelling of cheap toothpaste and a lingering hint of acid. “We never got you anything to eat,” Dean realizes suddenly.

“It’s okay. I’ll stop by that diner tomorrow for something before school.” Sam’s words come out muffled and a little slurred, and when Dean lets his fingertips trace lightly up and down his arm, Sam shivers. “You’re so gross. Not s’posed to feel nice.”

“Almost lost you, dude. Think that gives me a free pass to do gross sentimental crap if I want to,” Dean tells him.

Sam gives a breathy little noise and nuzzles his face into Dean’s sternum. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

Again, Dean asks, “Then what? What do you need from me? … Sammy?”

But Sammy’s already fast asleep, his soft snores wheezing out onto Dean’s upper chest and limbs tangled heavily in Dean’s own.

• 

Dean won’t fall asleep. Can’t fall asleep. What if Sammy wakes up before Dean does and tries—? He doesn’t want to think about it and doesn’t have much within arm’s reach in the way of distractions, so Dean keeps busy (if you can call it that) by watching over Sammy: counting his snores, smelling his hair, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing press into Dean’s chest and arm and palm.

They still share a bed occasionally, when Dad’s around and there’s no extra couch or cot wherever they’re staying, but it’s been years since they’ve slept curled together like this: Sam declared around age ten he was getting to be grown-up enough to deserve his own bed at night, and that was that. Dean suspects it had less to do with growing up than it did with Sam waking them both up in the middle of humping all over Dean’s leg during a wet dream one night, which neither of them ever brought up again, thank god. Ever since, they’ve always slept at opposite ends when they’ve had to share, which suits Dean just fine: he’s got no trouble sleeping through Sam’s repression-induced flailing around as long as they’re not touching when it happens, and to his knowledge, Dean’s never done anything in his sleep to make Sam uncomfortable.

He starts to feel a little nervous remembering, though, and sure enough, Sammy’s only been asleep for an hour before he thrusts his hips into Dean’s thigh with a whimper. Dean freezes, cursing himself: he should have _known_ to shove Sam off earlier so he could grind into the mattress like a normal person instead of into Dean, but Sam has looked so incredibly fragile all night, seemed cozy if not content sprawled half on top of Dean like this, and Dean hasn’t had the heart to separate himself from his brother and take that away from him. Still doesn’t, to be perfectly honest.

Would it be weird to just… let Sam finish? The last time this happened, Sam was humiliated, and Dean’s afraid to risk giving him any extra incentive to finish the job from earlier, especially when Dean’s got no idea what the root problem is. It’s definitely weird to an uncomfortable degree for _Dean_ , whose awkward boner is starting to pop up as Sam grinds faster against him, but does that make it weird to Sam? Is it Dean’s responsibility to stop him; is it a violation of his privacy _not_ to stop him? God, Dean hopes not. The last thing either of them needs is for Dean to inadvertently sexually assault the poor kid.

Maybe if he just—doesn’t touch Sam or move or anything. Christ, is he going to need a cold, long shower in the morning to wash away the _noises_ Sammy is making, holy shit, gasping and mewling and letting out these high-pitched little moaning sounds for half a second apiece. Each of them sounds almost attractive—okay, maybe a lot attractive—until Sam pushes his bony knee into Dean’s calf or scratches Dean’s cheek with his hair or otherwise reminds Dean that the person jacking off into his leg, making Dean painfully hard, is _his goddamn baby brother_.

He’s still debating what to do when several things happen at once. Sammy ejaculates with a shout, the fluid squirting everywhere and splattering across both their clothes, but he’s shouting words like _no_ and _help_ and _stop_ and _hurts_ and thrashing his head around with his eyes—oh, god—with his eyes hurtling open. Dean’s still locked in place, but he blinks hard to drag himself out of his stupor and springs to action: crisis mode, acting before thinking. For the shouting, he presses an insistent index finger to Sam’s lips and lets flow a continuous babble of _here_ and _safe_ and _breathe_ and whatever words he can find to string them into sentences. To still his shaking, he grips Sam’s head in one hand, pressing together their foreheads and rubbing their noses against each other over and over. As Sammy rides out his orgasm with visible distress, Dean pulls Sam more tightly against his side and rubs reassuring circles into Sam’s back underneath his hoodie, watching with concern until Sammy’s fearful frown smoothes into confusion and pleasure.

“Better?” Dean asks once Sam’s breathing begins to slow and his hips stop jerking.

“Dean? What are—I was—thought… what’s happening?”

“You were sleeping. You were, uh, dreaming, and at first you seemed all right, but then you started yelling right when you got off, and it sounded…”

“Oh, fuck. Shit, Dean, I’m so sorry—”

“Language,” says Dean automatically.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m sorry, Dean, I… please don’t treat me like I’m some kind of freak. I need you. You’re—”

“Breathe, Sammy. I don’t think you’re some kind of sicko freak,” Dean promises, ruffling Sam’s hair gently with one hand. “It’s _perfectly_ normal for a growing boy your age to—”

Sam cuts him off with a weak backhand to the chest, looking a little heartened. “Sorry,” he mutters again.

“Not your fault,” Dean says airily. Half with genuine concern and half to fill the tense silence up, he asks, “What were you dreaming about, anyway?”

Shuddering, Sam says, “Oh, god. Nothing at first—I mean, nothing weird—but the girl turned into _Mom_ , and she wouldn’t let me stop. She was just holding me down making me… She had a knife. And yellow eyes.”

“Like the thing that killed Mom.”

“Yeah.”

Dean lets out a low whistle. Sam’s starting to look intensely uncomfortable now, so Dean claps him on the shoulder and says, “I’m gonna go get a shower. You try and get back to sleep, all right, kiddo?”

“Yeah, all right,” Sam echoes, and he’s asleep again by the time Dean emerges from the bathroom, problem, ah, resolved.

Plucking up Sam’s copy of _1984_ from the bedside table, Dean plops back onto the bed, careful not to touch Sammy this time, and leafs through it back to the first chapter, leaving the folded-up diner placemat Sam’s using as a bookmark untouched. He’s never been a big reader, not that he doesn’t think he’d enjoy it but more because he never seemed to find the time for anything as impractical as academics when he had more important things to worry about, like protecting Sammy and saving people and training to gank a monster before the monster can gank you. But in this room, there’s nothing to research and nowhere to train, and he’s sure as hell not leaving Sammy on his own tonight, so Dean indulges himself for once, making quicker work of the book than he’d thought himself capable, his reading skills as shoddy as they are. He’s more than halfway through by the time the sun starts coming up. Mercifully, Sam hasn’t stirred since the Yellow Eyes incident. 

Switching off the alarm clock next to them, Dean gingerly hoists himself off the bed, careful not to disturb Sammy, who’s snoring away and clinging to his pillow like a life raft. He resists the temptation to touch him—to brush away the hair plastered to his sweaty cheeks, rub a thumb over the line of drool trickling down his chin—and instead rummages through his duffel for his cell phone and a copy of the local bus schedule and gets to work.

• 

It’s another few hours before Sam wakes, and Dean sets the book back down on the bedside table and kneels on the worn beige carpet in front of his brother. “Sleep okay, kid?” he asks. His voice is perfectly steady this morning, but judging by Sam’s cocked eyebrow and frown, Dean’s face isn’t quite so composed. Unlike Sam, Dean’s never cracked how to keep his true emotions out of his expression.

“Um, yeah. No more nightmares,” says Sam, and when he doesn’t say any more about it, neither does Dean. “I never heard the alarm go off. What time is it?”

Checking his watch, Dean answers, “’Bout nine.”

Sam flies up into a sitting position and, as expected, launches right into it. “ _Nine_? What are you still doing here? Why didn’t you get me up? School started almost an hour ago—”

“I called you in, told them I was Dad and that you were throwing up in bed.”

Sam flushes scarlet. “But—” 

“Well, you _were_ ,” says Dean, smirking.

“But I’m not sick.”

“You looked like you could use the rest.”

“I looked fine.”

“Okay, I’ll put it this way: _I_ thought you could use the rest. Don’t get your panties all twisted.”

“Shut up, jerk.” Sam sits there sulking for a few seconds, fisting the stained bottom edge of the sweatshirt Dean lent him in one hand. He says now, more quietly, “Thank you, I guess.”

Beaming, Dean tells him, “Oh, I’m not done. Get dressed. Lots to do today.”

Sam’s smile is shaky at best, but it’s there, and Dean’s willing to— _needs_ to—count whatever he can get as a victory.

The walk to the diner is a short one. The town is small for a suburb, and the Super 8 where they’re staying is within a few miles of most of their essentials: the local junior high and high school, a couple diners and a Wendy’s, and a Farmer Jack for groceries. Dean would’ve preferred a Walmart—they’re cheaper than any other chain he’s seen so far—but the nearest one is a twelve-mile bus ride away, and Sammy would bitch so much about the travel time that it’s _seriously_ not even worth it. They manage to make it all the way into the restaurant and are waiting on their drinks (coffee for Dean, OJ for Sam) before Sam drops the question Dean’s been waiting for.

“Dean,” he says, swirling his straw around his water glass in idle circles, “why didn’t you have us both go to school today?”

And there it is again: that pulse toward Sam that Dean always feels is clenching around his insides again, digging its springs deeper into him with every blink of Sam’s lashes. “Toldja,” he says lightly, “I wanted you to get some rest.”

“You could’ve gone to school this morning while I was asleep at home. You could’ve left me a note or something. And I _know_ you stopped calling in your absences anywhere ever since that lady in the office recognized your voice at that school in Kentucky last month.”

“Another absence on my record isn’t going to make the shit we hunt any more _or_ less inclined to waste me,” Dean says. He takes a pull of water from his straw and fiddles with a corner of the laminated breakfast menu.

“Yeah, and how many more do you need before you flunk your senior year automatically? You’re supposed to graduate in May. You _promised_ you’d get your diploma. _On time_.” 

“I did. And I will,” says Dean, reaching forward to tilt Sam’s chin up between his thumb and forefinger. The corners of Sam’s eyes, mostly dark blue this morning with big amber splashes up top, are creased and turned down when they meet Dean’s. “And that diploma’s gonna be the biggest, most expensive birthday present, in more ways than one, that you’re ever gonna get from anybody, so be damn grateful when you get it and don’t go asking me to top it when you’re turning fifteen, you hear me?”

Their waiter chooses that moment to come back to their table, so Dean withdraws his hand, chugs down some coffee, and lets the subject drop. He’s still got no idea why his education is so important to Sam—Dean suspects Sam might not want to keep hunting forever, but Dean’s given Sam no reason to believe that _Dean_ is less than content with it—but saying no to the kid has never been Dean’s strong suit, and it must be important to Sam for him to get so worked up about _every_ time Dean cuts a class or fails a test.

He can tell Sam’s going to want to keep talking about it, so after they’ve placed their orders, Dean quickly announces how much he read while Sammy was sleeping, grinning when Sam can’t stop his excitement from leaking through even as he tries to admonish Dean for staying up all night. Relaxing against the back of the booth, Dean feels himself melting into Sam’s enthralled chatter, and Sammy begins everywhere Dean ends, and Dean wouldn’t need to be whole—wouldn’t need hunting or women or Baby or any of it—if Sam never stopped smiling like this, if Dean could give in to this and never pull away.

Sam keeps tossing him nervous looks when he thinks Dean’s not looking, like he’s afraid of what Dean’s going to do when the kid gloves come off. Dean can’t blame him: he almost never blatantly dotes on Sammy like this, lets his total devotion to the little twerp leak out instead across pranks and insults and humiliation in front of Sam’s classmates. For his part, Dean’s scared, too—not that he’ll lose his temper, but that whatever hysterical shit he chokes out will drive Sam away from him or, worse, drive Sam to try something stupid.

Sam eats his eggs and hash browns slowly and deliberately, _too_ deliberately, like on the days Dad doesn’t leave them enough food money before a hunt, when Sam eats half the calories he needs and Dean eats nothing at all. It was Dean who told him the trick about eating slowly to stretch the rations, how it takes your head some time to realize that your belly is full and how waiting between bites will prevent you from overeating and squandering your resources (at best) (and, at worst, will help you gauge how much danger you’re putting yourself in when you have to stop too soon). They used to have a lot of days like that, then fewer, and now more again ever since Dean got himself caught stealing bread and landed at Sonny’s until Dad pulled him out to beat him within an inch of his life, the damn hypocrite. But _today_ , oh, today Dean’s got one of Dad’s fake cards, and why does Sam insist he’s done when Dean can _see_ the self-discipline it’s taking him to poke at his plate so slowly, and when Dean orders them each two huge slabs of cherry pie, Sam narrows his eyes but lets loose a string of obscenely happy noises as he makes short work of both his slices.

“Go pay with this,” Dean tells Sam once their plates are clean, passing him the card. “I’ll be right back.” He flashes a grin when Sammy knits his eyebrows together with a frown, and he shoves the kid’s shoulder a little, away from the booth and toward the register.

He just needs a minute to himself, just needs to splash some water on his face and wake himself up. He’s just wound up from staying up all night; as soon as he can get three or four hours of sleep, he’ll calm down and know how to save Sammy, and he won’t feel like… like…

Dean clenches his hands onto the ceramic edges of the sink and tentatively tilts his head up to the dusty mirror. There must be something in his eye, both his eyes, but it’ll flush out with water, and the whites are only bloodshot because he’s so tired, and as he twists on the cold water, he has a fleeting, hysterical urge to call Nancy and tell her—what, exactly? That Dean let his kid brother turn suicidal on his watch and he didn’t even notice? That he can’t take Sam to a counselor because telling the truth about their lives would land them in foster care or, worse, some mental hospital? That Sammy was ready to fucking kill himself and not three hours later Dean was beating off in the shower to the actual fucking memory of his _kid brother’s_ erection grinding into his thigh?

He really doesn’t know why in the hell it seemed like a good idea at the time to keep Sam so close after he woke. It’s just, Sam had looked so lost and humiliated the last time something like this had happened, and Dean didn’t want him to feel—lonely? Wanted to take any shame Sam might have been feeling and put it on himself—the liable, _conscious_ one—for choosing to help Sam through it.

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to Dean, either. It’s not like Dean’s even into Sam like that, or like Sam’s even into Dean.

Which means Sam probably wouldn’t have let Dean pull him onto him, or been comfortable with Dean _not_ moving away when the dream started, if he’d been capable of making decisions at the time. 

Dean’s not sure whether he wants to throw up or cry, so his body decides for him and does both. He just barely makes it to the nearest stall in time, sobbing and coughing as his breakfast hurtles into the basin of the toilet, which of course happens at the exact moment Sam throws open the restroom door with Dean’s name on his lips.

Dean can’t exactly reply mid-vomit, but Sam gets the idea. Dean can hear his footsteps coming hesitantly toward him, and then goddamn perfect little Sammy is rubbing his back with one hand and looping the other arm around Dean’s waist. It feels good. He pukes harder. The dirty, graying basin is filling up with soggy chunks of omelet and whole cherries drenched in syrup.

The dry heaving starts up after his stomach empties about five minutes later, and the crying, _god_ , the crying wouldn’t be such a problem if Sammy weren’t here, but he is, and Dean can’t even stop long enough to tell him to leave. He tries—he does—but when Dean turns away from the toilet to look him in the face, Sam gives him the saddest smile in the world, plants one arm around Dean’s back and his remaining hand in Dean’s hair, and tugs. He’s trying to pull Dean into his chest to comfort him, exactly the way Dean always comforted Sammy when they were little, and that startling realization makes Dean feel twice as sickened.

Sammy’s saying something, over and over: “All my fault.”

“No,” Dean says thickly.

“All mine. My fault.”

“I tried… I wanted to give you…”

“It’s _okay_ , Dean,” says Sam, and Dean realizes as he does so that Sam’s voice is wavering the way it does when he cries.

“Sammy, I’m so sorry.” It’s easier to have this conversation from within the sanctuary of Sam’s thin, trembling arms and the confines of the bathroom stall. Dean clings to him for dear life, digs the pads of his fingers into the front of Sam’s hoodie and squeezes.

“No, Dean,” Sam murmurs in that frightening, wobbly little voice.

“Last night—”

“I’m fine,” Sam says sharply, freezing up under Dean’s fingers.

He shakes his head and swallows hard. “No. The—sex stuff. Did I fuck you up?”

The five or seven seconds before Sam formulates an answer are some of the scariest Dean’s ever experienced. Finally, Sam says, “No. I mean, it was weird, but I was feeling scared from that nightmare and—and guilty and… it was like you made it safe to—let go, to fall apart.”

Some of the pressure around Dean’s lungs relents, and he takes a few steadying breaths. “You know I wouldn’t _ever_ … if I thought you might not want…”

Sam pulls him in closer and says, “I know.”

They stay there in silence for a minute or two, Dean’s knees digging into the cracked white tiles of the bathroom stall and his cheek pressed up against Sam’s chest, Sammy still shaking as his frail body envelops Dean’s tougher one. Dean turns his face inward toward Sam again as he mutters, “You’re scaring me so damn bad, Sammy.”

“Dean,” Sam sighs. He shifts both his hands to cup Dean’s cheeks, pressing one thumb to the underside of Dean’s chin and turning it upward. Although he isn’t crying, Sam’s donning a guilty frown, his lips trembling violently and his eyes creased into a heavy pout. They’re a blue-green color in this lighting, with sharp hazel rings encircling his pupils. “I’m here, okay? I’m here, I’m real, look at me—feel that?” Sam asks, seizing Dean’s hands and running them across Sam’s shoulders, then from his neck to his waist and back up again, this time under the sweatshirt, so that, _shit_ , Dean can feel Sammy’s ribs poking out through his T-shirt. He didn’t realize Sam had been getting thin like that again. “I’m right in front of you. I’m breathing, and I’m solid, and I’m thinking about my history test coming up next week and hoping Dad doesn’t come home for a while and—and trying to be normal for you, okay, instead of some suicidal lunatic—”

“You’re not a lunatic,” Dean interjects in a very small voice. His hands feel warm caught between Sam’s core and his sweaty palms.

“That isn’t the point!” Sam snaps. “Please just—I don’t want you to suffer just because you saw me fucking up.”

“Don’t say ‘fuck,’” Dean says dully.

“Dean, I’m serious. I—I’ll work it out; there’s time; I’m not dying.”

“But how do I know—”

“I’m _not_.” Sam guides Dean’s left hand up to Sam’s neck, onto his carotid artery. “I’ve got a pulse, and it’s healthy. I’m healthy. Please don’t be scared of… I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I’m not gonna go anywhere. I won’t leave you, Dean.”

Sam was more than ready to leave him last night—but Dean can’t summon up the energy to act bitter about it when Sammy already feels so far away. Sam must see it in his face—his stupid, honest, expressive face—because his eyes start filling up again and he clutches Dean’s hands tighter to him. It’s when Sam’s breath catches in his throat that Dean suddenly realizes what Sam’s about to do.

Dean has enough time to stop it, if he wants, but his head is still too cloudy with fear and guilt and pulses to figure out what he wants, or what he needs, or, most importantly, what Sammy needs. He thinks it might be Sam’s pulse under his fingers that’s blurring everything together, an actual damn real-world manifestation of this thing in his head that’s making his body scream louder (da-DUM da-DUM), but he only gets as far as wondering whether _this_ is what the drumming is about, and whether doing this would make it louder, before Sam slouches down and presses his forehead to Dean’s.

The pulsing in Dean’s head stays the same, but Sam’s pulse under Dean’s hand is picking up, Dean’s sure of it. He gapes, wide-eyed, at Sammy—innocent-kid-brother-vulnerable Sammy, Sammy whose crib Dean used to crawl into every night to keep him safe, Sammy who cried half the night after learning about Dad’s monsters—and Dean wonders vaguely when Sam grew up so fast and how he missed it as Sam slowly, achingly slowly, tilts his mouth toward Dean’s. 

At first, the kiss is stunningly delicate. Sam’s lips are chapped and dry and just barely make contact with Dean’s, and he and Dean kneel that way, unmoving, for what may be forever until Sam parts his lips enough to inhale. The movement angles his mouth lazily around Dean’s bottom lip, and Dean can feel the soft wetness of the inside of Sam’s lips grazing against him even before Sam breathes out and moves in now a little closer, letting go of one of Dean’s hands to pull Dean into him by the small of his back, now close enough to fully crash their mouths together. Sam starts to move, dear lord, painfully gradual little motions, and every time Sam licks or nibbles or suckles at Dean’s lip, Dean (da-DUM da-) forcibly withholds a whole host of increasingly filthy noises because he’s pretty sure this is Sammy’s first kiss and it’s on the floor of a bathroom stall with his big brother and Dean can’t mess this up for him any further, he won’t, by scaring him off.

Dean thinks it’s over when Sam starts to pull back, but Sammy just whispers, “I’m here, right here with you,” close enough that his lips brush Dean’s, and Dean can feel the words as much as hear them, like Sam’s tattooing a promise onto some secret, vulnerable part of him. He starts kissing back then, chastely but intimately at the same time: he’s slow, mostly closed-lipped, but Dean strokes one hand carefully over Sam’s neck and cheek and temple, winding the other in and out of Sam’s hair, curling his fingers around the long, coarse strands.

It’s weird and nasty and wonderful, and Dean should be horrified that this is _Sammy_ he’s holding, but he’s not—if anything, the least-weird and least-nasty part about it is that it’s Sammy. His shape feels all wrong—no curves, flat chest, square jaw, Adam’s apple—and he’s too _young_ , Jesus, and Dean’s more than a little freaked out wondering whether Sam’s getting hard from this. But it’s Sammy whom he raised, who adores him, whom he exists to protect, and that constant feeling of missing Sam even when they’re together seems distant this way, like it’s all right that Dean never has the right words because he knows how to do this. Like…

Reluctantly, Dean turns his head away to kiss Sam’s temple, then the top of his head. “Christ, Sammy,” he says, surprised to find that he’s breathing heavily, almost panting.

Sam doesn’t say anything, just shoves his face somewhere near Dean’s shoulder and puts his hands in his own sweatshirt pockets. It’s after about a minute of this that Dean realizes Sam is probably scared to see Dean’s reaction, maybe feels embarrassed, too.

“You know,” Dean says, still running one hand up and down Sam’s skull, “you’re unreasonably good at this for not having any practice. Like, _obscenely_ good.”

After a pause, Sam answers, “How can you tell I’ve never kissed anybody before?”

Chuckling, Dean tells him, “Please. I’d have known about it if you had. You think you’re stealthy, but you’re not that stealthy, kid.”

Sam burrows deeper into Dean’s shoulder, but at least he’s talking again. “I just know how lips work. Not tongues or hands or… other stuff.”

“You did plenty fine with them just now,” says Dean. “Nothing to feel self-conscious about.” It isn’t true, of course—Dean’s feeling pretty self-conscious himself about kissing his brother, Jesus Christ—but Sammy hugs him a little when he says it, at least, and Dean hugs back. “We can talk about it later if you want to, okay? I did a bad job picking the venue to start feeling all my feelings at. Dunno about you, but my knees are starting to hurt down here.”

Sam’s face looks blotchy and pink when he emerges from Dean’s shoulder and heaves himself upright. “We’re okay,” Sam says as Dean stumbles to his feet, and they both know it isn’t true.

“Damn straight,” Dean says.

•

He’s careful not to touch Sam again on the whole walk toward the bus stop two blocks away. It strikes him how—not _hard_ that is to do, but how odd it feels to be near Sam without bumping elbows or scratching his head or trapping him in a noogie. Is it normal for brothers their age to casually touch so much?

Probably not, Dean figures, but he dismisses the thought without much concern. He and Sammy never had much of a shot at normal, not after Mom died and Dad branded it into their skulls that they’re all each other’s got, all each other’s _permitted_ to have. They’ve been in training since childhood to kill paranormal creatures for a living, for god’s sake. Dad’s raising them in sleazy motels and rented houses on credit card fraud and gambling, no hobbies or visitors or futures allowed beyond an eternity of _this_. Dean should consider it a blessing that he’s even got Sammy to share it with, that there’s another person in this shitty life with him who _wants_ to touch and kiss and worry and piss off and cross lines with Dean.

Besides, everything’s going to go back to normal once he talks to Sam and makes a plan to stop whatever it is that’s making Sam unhappy. Sam will go back to being a pain in Dean’s ass and fighting with Dad all the time and thinking about girls, Jesus Christ, and being an adorable little punk who doesn’t give a shit what he’s told or what Dad has to say about him.

Only problem: Dean doesn’t know anymore whether Sam _does_ give a shit about it and just pretends otherwise. There’s a lie buried somewhere or other in the way Sam’s been presenting himself, and Dean’s got no idea how to pinpoint it.

He startles a little when Sammy interrupts his train of thought to ask, “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” and _god_ , why does he still sound so afraid?

“How much less dorky you’re about to look when I’m through with you. We’re getting you a real haircut, kid.”

Dean can’t help but snicker as Sammy goes a bright shade of pink and splutters, “But I don’t want—”

“Don’t get all bent out of shape on me; I won’t make you chop it all off,” Dean says, chuckling. “You think I want another ten-minute scene from you outside a barbershop? I’m taking you to a salon, kiddo. You’re getting at least an inch or two taken off into something that doesn’t make you look like you’re being raised by cavemen. We’re going to one of those places that washes your hair with expensive shampoo first and everything.”

Sammy’s got one hand in some sort of protective stance to shield as much hair as he can cover (which isn’t a lot) from Dean’s view, and he’s glaring at him with some mix of defensiveness and awe. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. _With_ conditioner. And I’ve heard that when they’re about to blow dry it—”

“No,” says Sam, turning even redder, “I mean you’re really going to let me keep it long?”

Sam’s ratty-ass mane of hair is quite certainly too long, but Dean figures encouraging Sam to clean and trim it on occasion might prevent the blowouts that end with Dad taking a pair of scissors to Sam’s head and Sammy refusing to speak to him for as many months as it takes to grow back. “Just take off at least a couple inches from the top layers, and I’ll get off your back. Deal?”

After a pause that feels just barely long enough to make Dean nervous, Sam’s skeptically cocked eyebrows lower a little, and he gives Dean a playful little shove. “Deal. Thanks, Dean,” he agrees, and Dean congratulates himself on succeeding in making Sam smile by pampering and distracting the kid.

Sammy’s hip smacking into his makes it feel safer somehow to let his guard down, and Sam smiles again when Dean slings an arm over his shoulders and rubs his knuckles into Sam’s scalp. “Yeah, yeah, you little punk. Got your bus card? We shouldn’t be waiting much longer for it to get here.”

Sure enough, they’ve boarded, de-boarded, and arrived at Salon Esmée within the next twenty minutes. It’s its own building, none of that rundown strip mall business Dad sends them to when they don’t just shave at home, and Dean’s fairly sure that that’s gold freakin’ trim on the roof and along the doorframe and windows. He and Sammy, in their fraying sweatshirts and ragged jeans that fall high above their ankles, look severely underdressed compared to the manicured soccer mom types that Dean can see through the ceiling-length windows. If Sam minds, though, he’s doing a great job of hiding it. “This is awesome, Dean, come on!” he says, and that’s that as Dean tails his half-skipping brother up to the entrance.

Dean didn’t make an appointment—should he have made an appointment?—but the smiling, white-toothed receptionist tells them that they’ll only have a ten-minute wait before the next hairdresser is free. “Great!” Sammy tells her with delight. “I just need a haircut. He’ll take a trim and a shave.”

“What?” says Dean as Sam’s instructions slowly register. “Sammy, I’m good, I—”

Turning away from the receptionist’s mahogany desk (Christ) to face him, Sam says softly, “Come on, please? We have a card, and it’ll feel good, I swear.”

And it _does_ feel good, Dean grudgingly admits to himself fifteen minutes later as some stylist named Keisha massages her false nails into his scalp in what seems like a wholly unnecessary full wash, given how short Dean’s hair is. He’s draped in a ridiculously purple apron thing, and the hard ridge of the sink puts strain on the back of his neck, but the water is soapy and warm and hitting him in pleasantly sharp jets, and he swears Keisha could be some kind of voodoo masseuse with those insane hands and nails on her. She wraps a towel turban-style around Dean’s head when she’s done, and as he follows Keisha across the room, he makes eye contact with Sam through the mirror at Sam’s stylist’s chair. Sammy beams at him and throws him a thumbs-up that Dean answers with a smile. He represses a laugh: Sam’s stylist can’t be happy about having to comb through months’ worth of gnarls and knots.

They end up sitting two chairs apart, on either side of an elderly woman whose head is half covered in tinfoil. When he thinks he can get away with it, Sammy flashes Dean increasingly ridiculous faces followed by sparkling grins, resulting in a few snorts from Dean loud enough to attract glares from Tinfoil Woman and furrowed eyebrows from Keisha.

He reaches up with his right hand, slowly so that the motion won’t rustle the apron and attract attention, and clamps Sam’s amulet between his thumb and forefinger. Sammy looks so _vibrant_ now, face open and eyes alight with glee and mischief and something Dean can’t pinpoint, like all the kid needs is to play dress-up with Dean for a day to be happy and then Dean will be enough, and Dean will never be enough for the geek, not to stop Sam’s tantrums or fights with Dad or mood swings that end with his hand down a pill bottle, apparently. Sam seems to sense the shift in Dean’s thoughts because he passes him a smaller smile now, less giddy and more—Dean can’t tell—sympathetic or guilty or nurturing, maybe. _Thank you_ , Sam mouths slowly, and Dean wishes he could undo whatever he did to take that sparkle out of Sam’s smile, thinks he’d be content to do nothing but keep it there and melt in it for the rest of his life.

Shit. He clenches the amulet tighter. How does Sammy _always_ feel so incredibly far away? Dean’s heart throbs in time with his mind; he can feel it underneath the hand on his amulet.

Predictably, Sam’s hairdresser has just barely picked up her scissors by the time Dean’s all done, so he bolts out of his chair and allows himself a ten-minute breakdown in the bathroom after taking a piss. It’s a single-occupancy room, but even so, he makes sure to stuff his sleeve in his mouth to muffle the sound, just in case. It doesn’t feel like _enough_ by the time Dean forces himself to stop, but he’s allowed himself way too much leeway for feelings throughout the past day when he’s supposed to be tending to Sammy, so he splashes water on his face and gives himself the steeliest John Winchester look that he can muster in the mirror, and that’s that.

Sammy looks totally transformed by the time he gets out, not just from the cut but because this is the first time in a long time that Dean’s seen Sam appear properly groomed, his hair combed through and _smooth_ for once. He entertains himself for a second imagining what it must feel like _now_ to run it between his fingers, then hastily puts this thought out of his mind when Dean reminds himself that Sammy is thirteen and probably still suicidal and vulnerable enough without his significantly older brother having some sort of pedophilic quarter-life crisis in response to the pills thing and the dream thing and the kissing thing that is _never_ going to happen again, dammit. “Lookin’ good, little brother,” Dean says instead, keeping his hands trained to his sides.

Sammy, of course, throws a wrench in this plan within about three seconds when he flings his arms around Dean’s stomach with a muffled cry of “Thanks, Dean!” After the initial shock and panic wear off, Dean wraps his arms around Sam’s shoulders and, after a moment’s deliberation, slides the fingers of his left hand along Sam’s scalp, from the base of his neck up the curve of his ear, strands of Sam’s hair flowing effortlessly through them. Sam’s hair feels thick and fluffy and silken and a little oily, but not in the gross way it gets when Sam hasn’t showered in a while—Dean figures it’s due to the conditioner, or maybe from the unidentifiable mousse thing they use when they’re drying your hair here. When the side of Dean’s thumb grazes the shell of Sammy’s ear, Sam gives a hard shudder and hugs tighter.

Dean tips big and thanks god for the card again as he’s signing the receipt. “C’mon, kiddo,” he tells Sam, who’s leading the way out of the salon, when he’s all paid up. “So what’s next: lunch or—”

“Motel,” says Sam, bright but firm, spinning around and walking backward so as to face Dean.

It catches Dean off guard, but he doesn’t hesitate before protesting, “What? No. I’m not—”

“Your eyes have been bloodshot ever since I woke up this morning, and you’re moving slower, and your voice is all scratchy. You’re getting some sleep before we go anywhere else,” says Sammy evenly.

“Don’t need any sleep. I get by just fine on—” 

“I know you’re only doing all this with me because I scared you, Dean. You need—”

“That’s what you think? That I’d rather—be in class or making out with Nancy in some closet or something?” Dean’s voice can’t seem to decide whether to get louder or quieter and seems to settle instead for alternating between the two. “Sammy, I… it’s you, okay?” 

Sam stops walking when he reaches the sidewalk, his eyes creased and lips pursed. “Dean, I _want_ you to take care of yourself. I won’t… I’ll still be here when you wake up. I’ll stay in the room. I’ll stay in the bed if you want me to. At least take a nap. Please?”

And Dean could never say no when Sammy’s looking at him with so much concern, so they only stop to grab gas station snacks before busing back to the motel.

• 

Sammy lingers unsurely in the doorway as Dean kicks off his shoes and crawls into bed, and against his better judgment, Dean calls out, “C’mon in, then.” He doesn’t know if it would even be possible to get restful sleep without proof, physical proof, that Sammy was safe, and that’s not corrupt or perverse or anything, is it?

Sam doesn’t seem to think so; like Dean, he only stops to remove his shoes before clambering onto the bed. He sits on his calves and bites his lip for a long moment until Dean sighs and tells him, “Get under here before you catch a cold or something out there, twerp.”

With a half-smile, Sammy burrows under the covers and curls up firmly against Dean’s side. Dean unabashedly weaves all his limbs around Sam and promises himself he’ll take the hand out of Sam’s hair in just one minute, but Sammy groans low in his throat when Dean curls his fingers and tugs experimentally, and Dean’s out before he can make heads or tails of what it means.

When he wakes, he’s covered in sweat and something else. Tears. Sammy’s cheeks and eyes are wet when he pulls his face away from Dean’s neck and offers a weak smile. 

“’S wrong?” says Dean blearily, hooking his thumb under his hoodie sleeve and using it to dab at Sam’s tear-tracks. His hand is slow and clumsy with sleep.

“Nothing,” says Sam with that same damn smile.

Dean’s stomach lurches. “My job. Tell me.”

Sammy drops the smile and extracts one of his hands from between their chests, lacing his fingers together with Dean’s. “You finish school this year.”

Dean blinks and squeezes. “Not what I was expecting you to say, but okay.”

“What happens then?”

Even wound unimaginably tightly in Sam like this, Dean feels like he can’t get _close_ enough—not to comfort Sammy and not to satisfy the vibrating thing in Dean’s head saying things like _save Sammy_ and _only Sammy_. “Summer will be the same—traveling around on jobs with Dad and you until the school year starts again. After that… I dunno. Spend more time working jobs with Dad when you’re in school, I guess. Maybe stay behind sometimes to earn some cash for us. I’d make a good mechanic. Or bartender.” Or firefighter, not that anyone’s asking or that he could spare time for the training. He pushes the thought out of his mind.

“And when I finish school, then what?” 

Dean frowns at Sam, pulls him in closer with the hand on his back. “I’m not following.”

“This isn’t…” Sam swallows hard. “Eventually, Dad’s going to expect us to go out on our own. How many other hunters do we know who travel with partners? And I don’t… I don’t even _want_ to keep doing this. When I was a little kid, I always thought I’d get a job somewhere, buy a house, get married…”

Dean goes very still, even though Sam’s not saying anything Dean hadn’t already guessed. “I know,” he says finally. “I told you, you’re not stealthy.” When he realizes Sam’s not going to reply, Dean adds, “You still can. Do those things. If you want to.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Well, why not? Dad doesn’t get to decide that for you, not once you turn eighteen.” He’s pretty sure that the funny heart palpitations that he’s started having are coming from his heart debating whether to leap or sink or jerk him around for the hell of it.

Shaking his head, Sam says, “I mean, I _could_ —I could go through the motions—but it’s never going to feel real, you know? I just want to be normal, Dean, but I’m always—going to feel anxious if I don’t put down salt lines in my house, and I’ll have to concoct these elaborate stories to avoid telling the truth about how I grew up or what my family does, and I don’t know how to have a meaningful relationship of _any_ kind because of the lying and the moving, and…”

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t get too ahead of yourself, Sammy,” says Dean, squeezing Sam’s hand one more time before releasing it to rest it on Sam’s cheek. Sam closes his eyes. “Bobby’s still looped in with lots of hunters, and he’s a small business owner and everything. There are ways to make it work. And I’m no good at getting to know people, either, but I’m sure if—”

“And it wouldn’t matter even if I figured out how to stop repelling everyone around me because—well—’cause none of them are you,” says Sam, blushing fiercely, and for a horror-stricken, blissful moment, Dean is sure the world is ending, must be ending, because Sam can’t possibly have just said…? “I’ve never felt so close to—I love Dad, I love Caleb and Pastor Jim and everyone, but I… nobody’s you. You know Andrea Rolland offered me a hand job last week and I wasn’t even tempted to say yes? Talking to other people just makes me wish you were there with us. It’s not even a weird puberty thing or a jealousy thing—I don’t care what you do with girls or—and it’s always been like this. I just don’t know how to be happy when you’re not there, and I _can’t_ expect you to always be there, not with you being a hunter. And I’m not asking you to find some crap job somewhere so that you can settle down with me and be my—my girlfriend substitute or whatever. I don’t want that.”

Sam’s breathing hard and bright red, like he’s just run a damn marathon or something, and Dean is _floored_. “You know I would do anything to take care of you,” says Dean. “You know I don’t need anybody else. I don’t—it feels like something’s missing when you’re not there. Sometimes even when you _are_ there.”

“But that’s the _problem_ , Dean. Doesn’t that scare the hell out of you?”

“Sammy, language.” 

“Doesn’t it, though?”

Dean stares hard into Sammy’s wide eyes, a patchwork of hazel and light blue, and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

Sam seems to sense what Dean’s thinking because he says next, “I didn’t take the pills because of you, Dean, so don’t blame yourself for it. I just… feel really trapped sometimes. Because I know there’s all these reasons why I can never be—never do…”

Shutting his eyes tight for a moment, Dean says the only thing he can think to say: “Tell me what you need from me.”

“I keep telling you, you can’t fix this, Dean—”

“I know, but I…” Dean can’t fail Sammy. Not now. “I mean right now. Tell me how to help.”

Sam’s eyes drop to Dean’s lips and then to the ground before he says in a tight voice, “Please don’t make me say it.”

So Dean doesn’t.

They’ve gotten themselves all tangled up in the bed again, facing each other on their sides, and it seems to take years for Dean to extract both his hands and settle them on Sammy’s cheeks. His eyes are green with amber patches now, and Dean’s chest swells with the vibrancy of it, the miracle of Sam’s eyes still blinking and changing and avoiding Dean’s gaze, of his chest still rising and falling with breath. Dean strokes both thumbs over Sam’s cheekbones, then under his eyes to catch the lingering tears clinging to his lashes, and finally rests them on Sam’s eyelids to nudge his eyes closed. “Don’t over-think,” Dean murmurs hoarsely, maybe more for his own benefit than anything, and he slides his lips over Sammy’s.

Winding his arms tight around Dean’s neck, Sam leans into him, all lips and nerves and pliable before him. It feels less strange to Dean this time, cradling Sammy like he would as a kid years ago, Sam intertwined with him on the mattress now instead of on his knees like some girl in a bar, _not_ like just some girl, so much more solid, so much _more_. When Dean touches the tip of his tongue to the part in Sammy’s lips, Sam goes still. Between kisses, Dean mumbles, “Safe here, got you,” and it catches him off guard when Sam complies as soon as Dean says it, a long whine escaping from his mouth into Dean’s. 

Sam’s mouth is all cheap diners and sleep, greasy and sour, and the kid wasn’t exaggerating: he _really_ doesn’t know what to do with his tongue, opting to leave it lying there unmoving. To be honest, Dean’s rapidly forgetting everything he knows how to do during kissing, floored as he is that he is _actually doing_ this, but if the weak moans Sam’s making are anything to go by, he seems to be enjoying whatever the hell it is that Dean’s tongue is doing with the roof and fleshy sides of Sam’s mouth. He traces down the top of Sam’s tongue with his own, dragging a thumb across one corner of Sam’s open mouth, stroking Sam’s forehead with his other hand and playing with his bangs.

It’s soft and languid and frightening in its intensity, both of them breathing hard through their mouths around kisses. Dean’s eyes flicker open, and Sammy looks so small and pure and peaceful that he can’t help staring. Dean retreats, twisting his head gently to the side, and Sam lets out another one of those tortured moans, louder this time. “Good?” 

“Uh-huh,” Sam breathes after a beat. His eyes open up halfway, relaxed, a touch nervous, reverent. “Slow. Not…”

“I know,” Dean says, achingly hard already, planting a long and wet kiss on Sammy’s cheek. “It isn’t as hard if you can give in to it—you know, stop trying to get release and just enjoy yourself.”

“That’s stupid,” says Sam, nestling his head under Dean’s chin.

“You just think so because you’re still in the middle of puberty. It’s less frustrating once you grow out of it and aren’t dealing with a constant boner all day anymore.”

“ _You_ just think so because you’re some kind of submissive weirdo who likes foreplay too much.”

Dean whacks him on the butt with a pillow. Sam howls with laughter.

He can do this. He can touch Sam and like it if it’s just mouths, just today, if they’re going to tease each other and dick around about it, if it’s going to comfort Sammy, shield Sammy, save Sammy, love Sammy, _love_ — 

Sam’s yanking him down by the neck to kiss him again before Dean even registers that Sam’s not laughing anymore. It feels clumsy and strange and inevitable, something white-hot coiling between them and clicking into place, and hell if Dean isn’t a little in love with his brother, and hell if he isn’t utterly fucked.

They kill the evening eating Chinese delivery in bed and pretending to watch TV and pretending, too, that they don’t notice each other’s boners when they curl up together to sleep hours later. Pretending they don’t both know Dean is awake when Sam slips out of bed at half past midnight to take a shower that they pretend is about getting clean. When he’s done, Sam lingers at the foot of Dean’s bed for a long moment before crossing the room to clamber into Dad’s instead, and Dean wonders whether Sam’s bed feels as empty as Dean’s does without Sam in it. He waits until Sam’s been snoring for ten minutes before jacking off desperately into his hand, his hips pounding into the mattress, his face pressed to the spot on one of the pillows that still smells like Sam’s sweat.

They don’t talk about any of it the next day: the pills, the crying, the kissing, the things Sam said about the way Dean’s all he can see. For weeks afterward, Sammy stops coming close enough to touch, not even a hip bump or a head scratch like they always did before this all went down, but from that day forward, Dean swears he can feel the kid’s eyes drifting toward him every once in a while when Dean isn’t looking, just often enough to keep him guessing.


End file.
